Posts Tagged ‘camera’

“On May 4, 2015 at about 1:15 PM, CHP Helicopter H-32 responded to assist the National Parks Service and the Southern Marin Fire Department with a rescue. Earlier, a woman was out on Tennessee Beach and was swept out to sea. She managed to swim back onto a cliff, but the cliff was inaccessible to rescuers. H-32 was able to hoist her to safety, and also evacuated an NPS lifeguard and ranger to safety, as the waves became too treacherous. Another example of multi-agency cooperation in the efforts to keep everyone safe!

[UPDATE: I’ve omitted Stanley Roberts’ video from this post as I mistakenly thought it was new as of this week when in fact it was posted almost two years old now. My apologies, Stanley. As you can see, Mr. Roberts goes after everybody (including fake monks and nuns) and certain people at the SFBC have been irritated by that over the years.]

Now part of that’s due to “churn,” which is something that every organization has to deal with, but most of it has to do with behavior of the SFBC itself. I’ll tell you, I’ve been riding bikes around town longer than the current SFBC has existed – no, I’m not saying that I’ve been here since the “early 70’s,” I’m saying that the SFBC didn’t really exist in the 1980’s when I came to SF. I’m saying that before Critical Mass (and its predecessor, the “Commute Clot”), the SFBC didn’t really exist – they were nowhere, man. What _did_ exist, a little later on, was the car-centric Willie Brown Administration. And all those functionaries working for Willie Brown were trying to find some “bicycle people” to cut a deal with, to tame Critical Mass, to give grant money to. But no, all the Critical Mass leaders were saying stuff like, “Critical Mass doesn’t have leaders, Man.” Eventually, the SFBC managed to practically become a part of the SFMTA, you know, conducting surveys for SFGov, receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in taxpayer and feepayer money, forcing companies like Twitter to deal with the SFBC, you know, officially, and, in return, the SFBC stopped promoting Critical Mass, and SFBC now offers pols a nice photo op every year on Bike to Work Day and it actually endorses (without consulting the Members at all) for election Willie Brown protegees like, I don’t know, Ed Lee, for example. So that’s the history, and during this history I’ve seen the SFBC grow in membership, from “over 1000″ to “over 5000″ to “over “10,000” and then “over 11,000″ and then “over 12,000″ and then, uh oh, back down to “over 11,000″ and most recently back down to “over 10,000.” What are the numbers now? IDK, 9000-something? The SFBC isn’t exactly candid about its recent loss in membership. The SFBC certainly doesn’t want people freely looking at its tax forms or its older webpages, so that’s why it recently started suppressing this kind of information. Mmmmm… I’ll tell you, of course, there’s been a huge increase in bicycling in San Francisco since I’ve come here, and for various reasons, fine. (It’s sort of funny about how the big annual jumps in cycling came exactly during the rise of the fixie craze, and exactly when the Bicycle Plan injunction froze all infrastructure changes, but whatevs.) I’ll ask you, why can’t a monomaniacal advocacy organization like the SFBC concede anything? I guarantee you that the SFBC people who went the extra mile to “reach out” to Stanley Roberts of KRON-TV are pissed off about the above video coming out right before the Big Vote on Polk Street, which is supposably [what, no red underlining for a word I purposefully misspelled? Amazing] coming March 3rd, 2015, but who knows how that will work out. I’ll tell you, IMO Polk Street is a triple beam lyrical dream the way it is now. What are the other options to go north south in the area? If I don’t take Polk, then I’d be thinking Stockton, Grant, Kearney or the Embarcadero to the east or, to the west, Steiner (it’s sort of the pass over Pacific Heights, sort of) or Arguello through the Presidio. In your efforts to pursue your goals, SFBC, which I don’t necessarily oppose, you go too far and you end up alienating people like me, a man in his 40’s, and even older people such as Junior the Bike Messenger, and, apparently, THOUSANDS OF OTHER FORMER SFBC MEMBERS.

The reason why is that California tax officials don’t like the idea of some items not having sales tax. When you say “no tax sale,” it makes it seem that you the store might not be forwarding sales tax to Sacramento.

IRL, Samy’s is forwarding the money, but the FTB and the BOE both want to make sure consumers know this.

This might seem like a small deal to you, but it’s a big deal to the authortahs…

Here are some “dust trombones*” right here, back about a decade ago, all extended to the 400mm telephoto setting, the better to see the Blue Angels over Fort Mason, my dear:

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The thing about the old lens is that it offered IMAGE STABILIZATION (IS) plusan “ULTRASONIC” MOTOR (USM) (for fast auto-focus) in the same package. At the time, Nikon couldn’t keep up, so it would make you choose betwixt one feature or the other, if you were lucky. Nikon lost a lot of customers during the Aughts for just this reason.

“…according to the police code cited on the sign (Good Ol’ No. 869) scalping is not strictly illegal: This is a code that prohibits folks from selling wares on the street without a peddlers’ permit. This means folks who sell their tickets online or out of their homes or offices are not violating the law. And your humble narrator was unable to find anything within the police code stating that people who buy wares from unlicensed peddlers are subject to arrest…”

I don’t think these people have the resources to deal with the all-demanding Rec and Park Dept, but it’s pretty brazen to be holding huge reflectors and shades as the Rangers drive back and forth, so I don’t know:

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In any event, Golden Gate Park is a great place for a photo shoot, authorized or not…

Oh let the sun beat down upon my selfie-stick, stars to fill my dream I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been To pose for selfies with the gentle race, this world has seldom seen They talked for days of my new iPhone 6, and all will be revealed